


Two of Us

by Abagail_Snow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Drama, F/M, Road Trips, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abagail_Snow/pseuds/Abagail_Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early 1950’s, Peeta Mellark embarked on a road trip across America, where he picked up a hitch hiker named Katniss Everdeen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two of Us

Her name was Katniss. He didn’t know her last name. They weren’t on that sort of name basis, he supposed. All he really knew about her was that she was from Pennsylvania. Or West Virginia. It could have been Kentucky. She didn’t talk much. He knew that he picked her up outside of Columbus, so there was that. And he knew that she could roll a perfect cigarette, even though in their three days of travel, he’d yet to see her smoke one.

That’s what she was doing now, in the back seat of his 1948 Ford Deluxe. Her legs were crossed beneath her, a plastic bag of tobacco in her lap and a stack of skins balanced on her knee. She picked up a sheet of paper, filled it with leaves, and then rolled it into a slim cylinder, licking the edge of the paper to seal her work before dropping the finished cigarette in a peppermint tin.

“Do you like music?” Peeta asked, reaching for the knob that tuned the radio.

“It’s all right,” she said, her tone noncommittal as she continued making cigarettes.

There weren’t many radio stations on this stretch of road, and he rolled through several hiccoughs of white noise before picking up some rock and roll song that sounded a lot like a 12 bar blues to him. He wasn’t an expert on music or anything, so he wasn’t one to talk. It was just an observation, really. A thought to pass the time.

He didn’t say any of this out loud though. In fact, he was terrified to speak in front of her. He wanted to impress her. Wanted for her to like him. And he figured, if she didn’t like to talk much, she probably didn’t like people who talked too much either, so it was probably something that he shouldn’t do.

And so he sat in silence, with hands gripped firmly on the steering wheel, only allowing himself to hum with the radio, when he heard that she was singing along softly, from the back seat.

Peeta glanced at her through the rear view mirror, catching sight of her as she lifted the edge of her cigarette to her lips. Her tongue swiped the length before finishing the fold, a gesture that caused him to choke on his own breath.  He had no idea what he had gotten himself into.

He had never done something like this before. Had never even left Maryland until a few days ago. He was heading out west, because that was something he had decided to do. His friend Delly had been out in Monterey for six months now, and insisted that he come too.

“It’s marvelous,” she had said, in her usual overly enthusiastic tone. “The entire coast is a beach, and the people aren’t nearly as stuffy as all those East Coast phonies.”

Peeta didn’t consider himself a phony. And was certain that Delly wouldn’t refer to East Coasters as phonies, if she had thought that Peeta was a phony too. But he was concerned, none the less, of becoming a phoney, even though he wasn’t completely sure what the term implied.

He was barely 18, too young to be jaded. Yet, he was old enough to realize that he shouldn’t be too optimistic about things either. He was due to attend Georgetown in the fall to study law, because that was what notable men did.  And if he wasn’t going to be notable, then what was the point really?

It wasn’t as if he was limited to law.  Notable men also painted, or wrote poetry, two things that Peeta very much enjoyed to do (especially more so than law.) But those notable men were the types that drank until their livers bled out, or went mad, tied in little white jackets, or some similar type of tragedy. All things Peeta was not too enthusiastic to do.

And so he woke one morning, knowing that he didn’t want to be a lawyer, and that he didn’t want to go crazy, and that he certainly didn’t want to be one of those phony people, so he packed up his car and left. Heading west, towards Monterey.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“I could eat,” she said. Again noncommittal. Mysterious girls could never give up a hint of mystery, he supposed.

He pulled off the highway to a roadside diner that seemed to be clean enough. He wasn’t sure what kind of food she liked — even after spending three days with her — and knew she wouldn’t really tell him, even if he asked her. A menu at a diner was at a minimum ten pages long though, so there’d have to be at least one thing she’d want, he figured.

He was only kidding himself.  He could already predict what she’d order. Two slices of toast, dry, no butter, and a cup of coffee, black.

There. Not so much of a mystery after all.

He parked the Deluxe and dropped the keys in his pocket. Katniss was packing her cigarette supplies into her backpack. She zipped up the bag before hoisting it over her shoulder, and they walked into the diner.

Katniss carried all of her belongings in that backpack, unlike Peeta, who had several bags and boxes of things in the trunk of his car. She never let the bag out of her sight either. She kept one arm through the strap at all times, as if prepared to take flight on the shortest of notice. 

That’s what he was constantly waiting for.  To look away for the briefest of moments only to find that she was gone.  Floating freely with the changing wind, with no roots to hold her in place.

In the diner, Peeta ate a burger and tried not to laugh when a plate of toast was placed in front of Katniss.

It made him think that if she were to float away, that maybe he could catch her.

At a gas station on the way back to the main road, Katniss traded her peppermint tin of cigarettes for a new bag of tobacco and a pack of rolling papers. She placed a five dollar bill in Peeta’s hand, before she slipped into the back of the Deluxe.

“Gas money,” she said.

Money was tight, he hadn’t exactly saved up for the trip, but with Katniss’s contribution, it meant they could sleep in a hotel that night. With a real bed and a real shower.

It had been a while since he had slept well. All the nights before they had pulled off the road and parked on the edge of the woods. She slept in the backseat with her backpack as a pillow, and he tried to get comfortable, curled awkwardly across the front bench, with the steering wheel pressed into his shins.

He laid down on the bed, which had an itchy wool blanket thrown across it. His shoes were sill tied, and he was just on the edge of sleep when he realized that when you share a bed with a girl, you’re supposed to ask her first. He didn’t want to get up though. His neck was stiff and his back ached from driving too long.  All he wanted was a single night of good, comfortable rest, which he knew would be impossible to get lying on the floor.

He sat up on his elbows. She was sitting in the chair beside the dresser, curled up with her backpack hugged between her arms and knees, watching him.

“Is it all right if I…” he didn’t bother to finish the question, because he knew she would answer with something noncommittal. And then he’d just assume she didn’t want him in the bed, and then he’d feel bad for making her feel so uncomfortable. So he forced himself to sit up before he changed his mind.

“Sleep there,” she said. “It’s fine.”

He stared at the floor, which looked like it was covered with spikes, or razors, or something unfathomably uncomfortable. He really didn’t want to sleep on the floor. He looked at her for approval one last time, to be sure that she was absolutely sure. She nodded, and he fell back against the pillow and fell asleep.

He woke with her tucked under his arm, her cheek on his chest and her backpack sandwiched between them. He wished he could wake up that way more often.

They were only a day away from the Coast. Two tops. Katniss hadn’t given him a destination, a detail he found himself thinking about often as they drove closer to place that he never wanted to meet.

When he first met her, she was sitting out front of a gas station, rolling cigarettes. It had been the first stop of his trip and he was still riding the initial high of his liberation, which was the only reason he had the courage to talk to her in the first place.

“Need a lift?” he had asked.

The sun had been in her eyes, and she had to squint to look up at him. She smiled coyly, the type where only one corner of her lips lifted, and he knew, in that moment, that he was a goner. His heart had caught in his throat when she began to pack up her supplies, and then she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and walked to his car.

He figured she’d ride with him until she got to where she wanted to go, and he was afraid to ask her where that was, because he didn’t want to scare her off. He only knew that one day she would find what she was looking for, and then she’d be gone. And that he hated it, because he wanted her to stay with him.

It was crazy, really.  He didn’t know anything about her, except that she liked to sing when she thought no one was listening, and that she didn’t mind eating toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and that she could probably roll a cigarette in her sleep if she wanted to. But that wasn’t enough.  He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to know a lifetime worth of things if he could.

“I don’t want to drive today,” she said. The vocal chords in her throat hummed against his chest, right above his heart when she spoke. His heart began to beat faster at this, and he worried that she’d noticed. He didn’t care though, because she wanted to spend the day with him and that must have meant something.

They were in Colorado, on the other side of the Rockies where the land was flat and dry and everything a rusted shade of orange. He quite liked the color and told her as much. She nodded, as if she were taking note, and it made him want to tell her more.

He bought her a chocolate milkshake and got himself a vanilla, just in case she’d rather have that kind. They parked on the edge of a ridge, overlooking the desert and watched the sunset. He wished they had taken their time, he thought, as he watched the sun bleed a haze of pink over the landscape. He imagined all the milkshakes and sunsets they had missed, and he wanted them all back.

“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he said. It was too much, he decided, and hoped that maybe the words got caught in the sunset and would disappear beyond the horizon, unheard.

But she did hear it. And she lifted her head, which had been resting in his lap, and smiled. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” he repeated, and took a long, nervous sip from his melted milkshake until all his straw captured was gurgled air.

When night had fallen, they scraped together enough money for a bottle of whiskey.  They passed the bottle back and forth, Katniss sitting cross legged on the hood of the car, while Peeta sat on the orange colored dirt, leaning against the front bumper.  He wasn’t much of a drinker, but she seemed to be holding her own, and he didn’t want to seem foolish or lame in front of her.

She took a long swig and handed the bottle to him.  And he mimicked the motion, only allowing a small sip of the bitter liquid to pass through his lips. He tried to hand the bottle back to her, but she never reached out to take it, so he awkwardly stared at it, wondering whether he should set it down or not. Then she took out her skins and tobacco, and began to roll cigarettes over the worn backpack she had in her lap.

It was quiet for a while, before he spoke. “What’s so important in that bag of yours?”

She looked at him, startled, and then back at her cigarettes. He felt bad for asking, and tried to take it back, but then she answered by setting aside her supplies and pulling open the zipper on her pack.

All she carried was a brown leather jacket that looked about three sizes too big, and a brass looking locket.

“It was my father’s,” she explained.

“Where’s he,” Peeta asked, even though he had a pretty good idea.

“Died in the war,” she said.

Peeta could only nod. His father was too old to fight in the war, and his eldest brother too young by only a year, but he knew plenty of boys who lost their daddies. Too many.

“And the locket?”

She picked up the locket and polished it with her thumb. “My sister’s,” she said. “Got killed in an automobile accident a few weeks ago.”  He thought she was done talking, but then she continued.  “Couldn’t bear to sleep another night in the bedroom I used to share with her, so I packed up and left.”

Her eyes grew distant, like she was lost in a thought that was thousands of miles away. A minute passed, maybe two, before she blinked a few times, and reached for her rolling papers as if nothing had happened.

“You sure like rolling cigarettes,” he observed. He’d already done enough damage, but the effects of the whiskey made words tumble from his mouth like vomit. He took another long swig – an actual swig, not sip – to silence himself.

“My mother used to roll a pack for my father every morning,” she said. “Even after he died, she’d have a pack rolled and waiting for him, until one morning she stopped.” She frowned then and twirled the cigarette she was holding between her fingers. “She went mad after that. Never did come back. We had to lock her up in the looney bin.” It was quiet again, and her voice got soft, barely breaking a whisper. “Sometimes I’m scared if I stop rolling these cigarettes, I’ll lose my mind too.”

Neither one spoke for a while, but it wasn’t the comfortable type of silence. Peeta had never been the quiet observer, he’d always been outgoing and talkative, and there were quite possibly a million questions – at a minimum – that he wanted to ask her.

He was bound to ask her something stupid again, and fought the urge.  Focusing all of his attention on the damp label on the bottle of whiskey that he picked at with his thumb nail.

It was no use.

“Where you heading?” he asked.

“No where,” she said.

“You have to stop sometime,” he said.

“You can’t lose something if you don’t allow yourself to have it,” she said.

He wanted to tell her that he’d have her for as long as she’d let him, but suddenly words escaped Peeta Mellark. So he just sat there, and spent the rest of the night watching her roll cigarettes until she decided that she was tired.

She slipped into the backseat of the Deluxe and he moved to climb into the front.

“Sleep back here with me. If you’d like,” she said.

There really wasn’t enough room for both of them, but he wanted so badly to hold her again. He crawled across the back of the bench and opened his arms to her, and she laid on top of his chest, her ear over his heart.

That was how he planned to fall asleep until he felt her finger tips stroking his cheek. He opened his eyes to find her peering up at him. Her gray eyes were round and full in the moonlight. Her expression curious, as if she’d been studying him for quite some time.

He cupped her face in his hand and kissed her, because in the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. She reciprocated, opening her mouth to him, and he drew her closer, until he couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

The night turned into a haze of stolen kisses, bare skin, and tangled limbs in the backseat of the Deluxe. Katniss moved gracefully, like a bird gliding through the wind, in the cramped space, but Peeta was clunky and awkward, smacking his head against the ceiling of the cabin and getting tangled in his slacks. Soon, though, she was pinned beneath him and he was inside her, moving with as steady and even thrusts that his eagerness would allow.

He’d kissed girls before, touched them, even moved inside them in this way, but there was something different about Katniss. It made him think about what it meant to be notable. That maybe it wasn’t as simple as being a lawyer or an artist or a poet. That perhaps loving someone, in the way he felt he could fall for this woman, was all he needed in life to be happy.

And that revelation made him panic, because in two days they would be in California and she wouldn’t need him anymore. In fact, the way she looked at him now, her delicate fingers trembling as they continued to stroke the side of his face with a sad fondness, made him suspect she’d be gone in the morning.

“Tell me your last name,” he said, not caring about the pleading tone his voice adopted. He needed to know. Needed the missing piece to the puzzle of Katniss’s mystery if he ever hoped to find her again.

“I don’t have one anymore,” she said.

“I’ll give you mine,” he told her, and he meant it.

When he woke up the next morning, he was still naked, stretched out across the backseat of the Deluxe. Alone. He let his eyes adjust to the light that streamed through the rear window, and sat up slowly, hoping that it would help drain the disappointment that welled in his chest. He had lifted a hand to run through his mussed hair, when he noticed the blue ink scrawled across his palm.

 _Everdeen_ , it read. Katniss Everdeen, he committed to memory.

It was then he realized that he wasn’t alone after all. She was sitting in the passenger seat, a smile on her lips, watching him.

“You stayed,” he said.

“Where else would I go?” she replied.

He pulled her over the bench and into his lap to show her his appreciation.

It took two full days to reach the Coast and they took their time to get there. The road ran beside the ocean. The water on the left and golden hills to the right as they drove north.

“I want to swim,” she said, staring eagerly out his window from the passenger seat.

Delly had been right, about the endless beach, and Peeta pulled the Deluxe off the road until the tires touched sand. He sat by the edge of the water and held her backpack, while he watched her swim in the ocean.

When they lay out on the beach, waiting for the sun to dry her, he asked: “Where should I drop you off?”

“Wherever you’re going,” she said.

He had no idea where he was going, but with her by his side, he thought maybe he didn’t need to.


End file.
